A technique Eddie Templeton likes to spend time outdoor is by looking for fossils in rural Mississippi. Templeton not too long ago made an unimaginable discovery—a 7-foot-long absolutely intact Columbian mammoth tusk, an “extraordinarily uncommon discover for Mississippi.”
“Earlier this week our . . . scientists acquired a message a couple of main fossil discovery made by Eddie Templeton, an avid artifact and fossil collector and good friend of the Survey,” the Mississippi Division of Environmental High quality (MDEQ) mentioned in a press launch. “He was exploring in rural Madison County on the lookout for fossils when he stumbled upon what gave the impression to be a portion of an ice-age elephant tusk uncovered in a steep embankment.”
Templeton advised ABC Information that he assumed the tusk was from a mastodon. Mastodons have been smaller than mammoths, however each animals had massive ivory tusks. However it’s truly from a Columbian mammoth. These animals have been notably enormous and will develop as much as 15 ft tall and weigh over 10 tons (22,000 kilos).
“Mastodons are by far the most typical . . . finds in Mississippi as they have been browsers, like fashionable deer, and inhabited quite a lot of totally different environments,” MDEQ mentioned in its launch. “Mammoths which have been associated to fashionable elephants are far much less frequent finds in Mississippi as they have been open grassland grazers and would have been at residence in solely a choose few environments, notably the prairie areas of Mississippi.”
The tusk is the primary discover of its type for the realm.
Excavating the Mammoth Tusk
Templeton contacted the consultants after he made his mammoth discovery. A paleontological staff arrived to the fossil website and, alongside Templeton, spent a complete day eradicating the 7-foot-long fossil from the creek mattress in its entirety.
“To our shock, it had been deposited completely intact,” MDEQ mentioned. “This makes it an especially uncommon . . . Most fossil tusk ivory discovered across the state are simply fragments.”
After excavation, the staff delivered the fossil to the Mississippi Museum of Pure Science for additional analysis.
See MDEQ’s publish in regards to the discovery of a uncommon mammoth tusk in Mississippi right here:
